by Ciara Graves
The shadows fell away, and all that remained of Lacy was a pile of dust at my feet.
“I think I win.”
“Seneca?” Draven limped toward me. “What did you do?”
“Took care of her.”
“How? That wasn’t light magic.”
“Marlie said he could summon shadows.”
“Yeah, but not you.” He eyed the rings warily. “Seneca.”
Panic that there was something wrong with me crept in for a second, but it was overridden when a scream of terror ripped through the air.
We both spun around.
Rudarius landed inside the wall, in the midst his fighting vampires that were pushing the line of fae back into the castle.
The Middle Kingdom was moments away from falling unless there was a miracle. A line of guards charged Rudarius, silver spears aimed at his chest. The master vampire spread his arms wide, and the earth split before him, tripping up the fae. They hit the ground in a heap, and he shoved his left fist down, then dragged it up, face straining as if he pulled a great weight.
The disturbed turf rose and crashed into the fae, pinning them. More fae rushed in around him, but they were thrown away with a burst of shadow filled with red lightning.
“Take the castle,” he bellowed. “Find them. Kill the others.”
I took a couple steps when Draven grabbed my arm.
“Where the hell are you going? We have to retreat. There’s no stopping him. Not like this.”
“Then retreat. Get the others out if you can.” I pulled free and blurred away before he could argue with me.
Another line of fae led by Marlie and Captain Lark stood, ready to face down Rudarius.
Rudarius watched the melee, a look of pride on his face. The scars he caused on my body ached, and I rolled my shoulders, missing the sensation of my wings, now more than ever. Shadows swirled around my left hand as I waited for the right moment to attack.
Marlie should be retreating. Instead, he yelled to attack, and the fae rushed toward Rudarius. The fight was over before it even started. Rudarius snapped his fingers and creatures made entirely of darkness lashed out, striking the fae around Lark and Marlie. Then he took on Marlie and Lark himself.
I expected it to be a disaster, but the two fae were damned good fighters though they would not be able to hold Rudarius off for long. As they fought, the fae left held off the vampires while evacuating everyone else.
I sprinted to help Marlie, more to go after Rudarius myself, than to merely assist my brother.
Two vampires rushed me. I beat them down, the urge to get to Rudarius too strong to be stopped by his pathetic goons.
Lark shouted as Rudarius kicked him in the face then twisted his arm so hard he broke it. The crack of bone echoed sharply in my ears, taking me back to a time when I was trapped in a dark, dank dungeon, hearing my own screams every damned day.
The anger within me exploded, and I blurred straight into Rudarius, tackling him to the ground.
Lark dropped won. Marlie rushed to him. They both looked at me in shock.
“Seneca, your rings,” Marlie uttered.
I didn’t even look at him, just barked an order out. “Get Lark. Get the others. Go. Now.”
Rudarius snarled as he straightened, but when his eyes landed on me, his snarl cut off and his brow shot up. “Well, now. This is not what I expected to see. Not at all. My dear, sweet Seneca. How good of you to come so I could see how you’ve changed.”
I hissed as I fell into the offensive, shadows wrapping loosely around my forearm, waiting to be unleashed.
His eyes fell to the rings, and he tilted his head. “Curious. Very curious indeed. Turns out I was right about you all along.”
Whispers rushed through my mind. I thought they came from Minnie and Macron, but neither was there. I gave my head a hard shake to clear the noise. “You are going to die for what you did to me.”
“Am I now? And are you going to deliver the killing blow?” His eyes glimmered as he stretched out his hands. His face said he believed me to be weak.
I was going to be so happy when I wiped that damned smirk off his lips.
He sneered. “You would be so much better off if you simply joined me.”
“Why would I do that? So I can watch you kill more innocents?”
“I don’t know why you’re fighting it. You’re more than halfway to being like me, as it is. All you need is one final push. A nudge in the right direction.” He pointed to my rings. “The proof is clear enough to see. After all these years, I finally learn that I did succeed in creating a weapon to use against the fae—”
The last word was barely out of his mouth when I screamed and threw myself at him. I landed a solid blow to his face. This time, I was rewarded with his grunt of pain. I followed it up with a second blow, using my rings to amplify the hit.
“You bastard,” I ranted as I kneed him in the chest, then clasped my fists together and swung under his chin, sending his head snapping backward. “You stole everything from me. Everything.” I grabbed him by the shirt and punched him repeatedly with my rings, every drop of blood ignited another flame of triumph inside me. My knuckles were raw and bleeding, but I didn’t let up. Not for a second. Each time my fist made contact, I remembered another time he forced a vampire to bite me as a death sentence. I remembered the feeling of a burning blade against my skin as I was cut open and my blood drained. I recalled as he picked up my wings and then viciously tore them from my back. How he threw them into a fire, and I was forced to watch them burn away to ash.
Rudarius cackled, quietly at first, but as my hits slowed, his wicked chuckling grew louder. He grinned through the blood covering his face. “You are much stronger than I first anticipated. Such power within you. Such fury. Show me your anger. Let me have it. All of it.”
I bellowed in his face, striking him again to shut him up, but he only laughed louder. My arm grew tired and then his hand shot out for my left wrist. He clutched it in an iron grip. The rings on his hand interacted with mine. A spark of red light appeared where his power struck mine, but then overtook it until mine was shoved back inside my body.
I gasped as if struck by lightning, the jolt making my back arch painfully as I struggled to keep breathing.
“Thank you for saving me the trouble of tracking you down.”
He smoothed my hair from my face as I stood frozen in his grasp, unable to get my limbs to listen to my commands to get the hell away from him.
He breathed me in.
I shuddered, my will to defeat him vanished in a blink, as if it had never been there. What was I doing? I couldn’t kill him on my own?
“Ah, there it is. Your fear. My, how I’ve missed that delicious scent.” He buried his nose in my hair.
I was lost in my memories of his doing the very same thing to me right after he captured me. Right before all the agony started.
He ran his fingers, almost lovingly, through my long red locks. “Once I finish turning you toward the darkness, I think it will be time for me to take another bride. With you by my side, we will take Otherworld, and there will be no one to stop us. You and I are going to have fun together, Princess Seneca. My Princess Seneca.”
Bride? No, this couldn’t be happening. My nightmare had come to life after all this time. I was going to end up back in that damned cell with this monster torturing me until he broke me again. And this time, there’d be no coming back from it. I leaned as far back from him as I could, desperate to get away.
Rudarius grunted, a yell slipping from his mouth.
He released me.
And then, Draven was there.
“Let’s go. Move it,” Draven shouted, shoving me ahead of him toward the rest of the fae who’d retreated from the grounds.
“What did you do?”
“Just go.”
I managed to catch sight of Rudarius, who was flailing as he tried to dislodge a spear Draven must’ve stabbed into his back. He shouted for his vampire
s to get us.
My legs wouldn’t move any faster, too numb from terror at his words.
Draven pulled me along beside him, blurring so fast my stomach churned.
Marlie, Lark, and Shane were ahead of us, the rest of the guards worked to cover our retreat.
I wondered how they were going to stop the oncoming vampires until two fae with what looked like firebombs in their hands threw them onto the soil right on our heels.
Fire exploded, the blast powerful enough to throw us forward.
Behind us, vampires screamed as they burned.
“Your damned brother and explosions,” Draven muttered, then took my hand and hauled me back to my feet again. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can,” I snapped.
We fell in line with the rest of the defeated fae.
Where we were going to go this time? I had no idea, so I simply followed along.
Draven and Shane spoke quietly beside me. I heard my name a couple of times, felt their eyes on me, as though they were worried that I would suddenly go berserk and try to kill everyone.
My left hand burned, and I shook it out constantly, hissing when the pain grew worse.
We walked on for hours until the fae guards finally called a halt.
A stone archway stood ahead of us and beyond that was a fort of some kind. This one was intact and appeared well-maintained and supplied. Guards lined the walls. The gates swung open for our ragged party.
Our group was small, meaning either a lot of fae died in the attack or that many were left behind to fend for themselves. For their sake, I hoped they managed to run far enough away from Rudarius to stay alive.
We staggered into the courtyard where Mina was screaming at Raine and Karina.
“This is your fault. All of it. The dead are beyond count. My home is destroyed. As for my husband and my sons, where are they now? Where?”
“We warned you,” Raine tried to say.
She shook her head, obviously unwilling to listen. “How could you do this to me? You come to me asking for assistance, then you bring the very fires of hell down on my people. I will never forgive you for this. Never. The Burning Thorns will forever be my enemy.”
On any other day, I would’ve kept quiet. After all the shit I’d been through, after facing down Rudarius and seeing how weak I was in the face of his power. But no, not today. A maddening laugh bubbled up, until all I could do was open my mouth and let it out. It started quietly, and only Draven and Shane heard. Then it grew louder until I was cackling like a psychopath, doubled over as tears slipped from my eyes and my sides ached.
“Seneca?” Draven reached for me, but I moved away from him.
Every single face in the courtyard watched me as I attempted to get control of myself, failed, laughed harder, then finally settled down long enough to shake my head. “You freaking bitch.”
Mina’s jaw dropped as her guards moved in to flank her. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. You know what? All of you are bitches and cowards. Rotten bastards who don’t deserve to be ruling over the fae. You stand there and make threats when your army was just decimated because you didn’t listen. None of you ever listen. When you have an enemy at your gates, what are you going to do? Oh, that’s right, let’s turn on our allies. Let’s forget who our family is because that’s all the royal fae ever do.” I wasn’t sure when I started shouting, but once I started, there was no stopping.
“Get control of your daughter, Raine.” Mina’s voice shook with rage.
The second Raine took a step toward me I snarled, and Draven and Shane were suddenly there, blocking him.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“I told him he would not touch Seneca,” Draven said viciously, glaring at Raine. “Not again.”
I hadn’t been around for that conversation, but I was damned grateful to hear it. I gently pushed Draven and Shane aside, allowing me to stare Mina down. “That man will never have control over me, nor will Karina. They are not my parents. You hear me? They are nothing to me. Honestly, it’s a shame Rudarius’s forces didn’t get their hands on them too and save me the trouble.”
“You don’t mean that,” Marlie argued, hurrying around them. “Seneca, you are one of us.”
“One of you?” I barked another crazy sounding laugh. “I stopped being one of you when they abandoned me to that monster. If your husband and sons are missing,” I said, turning to Mina, “you best start praying for them because I can tell you exactly what Rudarius is going to do to them.”
“Be quiet.”
“Why should I be? I have firsthand experience. Think I should share it with you all.”
“Seneca,” Marlie pleaded, his brow furrowing.
“No. Raine did them all the favor of showing them my back, not that he had a right to do so.”
Raine lifted his chin, glaring at me as though the daughter he disowned wasn’t plotting all the ways she could end his life.
“They should hear the stories that go along with the scars. Every last one of them.”
“Seneca,” Marlie said, louder.
I whirled around, ready to deck him just to shut him up.
But his gaze wasn’t focused on my face. “Your rings… what is that?”
I lifted my left hand to find the shadows swirling around my fingers. They were flowing around the rings. Shadows instead of the light that should have been inside me. Red lightning flickered within their depths, just like the ones Rudarius wore.
The fae gasped and muttered, looking at me, fear on their faces. I had a brief glimmer of clarity until Mina yelled for her guards to seize me. I closed my hand into a fist, ready for a fight, but to my surprise, Captain Lark stepped to block them, his spear at the ready, broken arm curled against his chest. Marlie was by his side.
“What are you doing?” Raine yelled. “Marlie, get away from her.”
“You might’ve turned your back on her, but I will not.”
“She’s not one of us anymore. There is darkness in her, evil. She cannot be here with us,” Raine went on.
“I’m sorry, Majesty,” Lark said, bowing to his king, “but after what I saw today, I will not stand by while you persecute Princess Seneca.”
His words shocked me into silence.
“What did you call her?” Karina whispered.
“Princess Seneca, Highness. That is who she is. I understand she has been turned, but since she’s come here, all she’s done is tried to protect our people,” Lark insisted loudly. “She’s the reason we made it to the Middle Kingdom alive, though no one will admit it. She fought off the vampires, side-by side-with our men. She faced down Rudarius himself to give us a chance to get our people out. Tainted or not, she is Princess Seneca, and you will not treat her with such disrespect. Not again.”
“You have no authority over us.” Raine marched toward Lark looking ready to kill the fae if need be in order to shut him up. “You will do well to remember your place!”
“Oh, I do, Majesty. It’s right where I’m standing now.”
The argument was quickly turning into a standoff, and as I braced for the fight that was bound to come, a large black eagle cried out overhead. It flew lower and lower, then landed at Marlie’s feet. He bent and detached the small leather holder from its leg. The moment he did, the eagle flapped its wings and took wing. Marlie unrolled the paper inside the holder, cursing vividly.
“Prince?” Lark asked. “News from the mages?”
“Yes. It’s not good.” He held out the paper for Lark to read, but told the rest of us, “The last two houses have fallen. It appears the attack against the fae was a distraction. The mages have fled. The ones Rudarius hasn’t captured.”
“I warned you Rudarius was preparing for war,” Draven told Raine, Karina, and Mina. “This is just the beginning. We have to make a stand with anyone left. We have to stop him from growing any stronger, or all of Otherworld will fall.”
“Perhaps.” Mina’s nostrils
flared as she glowered at me. “But not tonight. Set a watch. See the wounded tended to. And you,” she added, pointing to me, “if you so much as raise a hand to anyone, I will have you bound in silver and iron chains, understood? I don’t care how many vampires you killed today, you are still tainted and unworthy to be amongst us.” She grabbed her skirts, spun around, and stormed into the keep.
Raine and Karina followed. When Marlie made no move to go with them, Raine called his name, but my brother remained beside Lark.
“Fine then, you can sleep out here with the rest of the vermin,” Raine ordered.
The interruption of the eagle’s message was well-timed, but now that the adrenaline from the fight had finally worn off, I was woozy and sick to my stomach. What I’d done during that battle, how I killed Lacy… the darkness brewing inside me combined with Rudarius’s words…
I excused myself and hurried away from the others, clutching one hand to my stomach and the other to my throbbing head.
The world closed in around me until all I saw was Rudarius’s face and heard his words echo in my ears.
His weapon.
He’d turned me into his damned weapon after all.
Chapter 8
Draven
Seneca bolted, following the stretch of wall inside the fort. She was far from well, and I took off after her, not trusting her to be alone right then. Especially after what I saw. The way she killed Lacy, the look in her eyes had been pure darkness. Evil almost. I sped up, pausing long enough to sniff the air to try and pinpoint where she’d gone. When I heard heaving coming from behind the stables, I rushed around the corner to catch her leaning against the wall being sick.
“Easy,” I said as I gently pulled back her hair and held her up as she vomited more.
“Go away,” she murmured in between heaving. “Leave me alone.”
“Yeah, not happening while you’re puking your guts out.”
She glared at me over her shoulder.
I shrugged. “Deal with it.”
She opened her mouth, probably to yell at me, but then she was heaving again, her body trembling violently. When she was finally finished, I put her arm around my shoulders and went to find a place to sit down. There was a stone bench beneath a tree in a small garden. I guided her there, and then we sat. A light breeze blew through the branches overhead. It was dark back here, only a couple of torches burned, but Seneca didn’t seem to mind the dim lighting. Like me, she should be able to see just fine.
